Koa’s voice floated after him. "Great Cosmos! I sure am sorry, spaceman. I guess I don’t know my own strength." He kicked away from the ceiling, landing accurately at Rip’s side. He added in a hard voice all could hear, "They sure are a nice gang, these spacemen. They never say anything about Planeteers." No spaceman answered, but Koa’s meaning was clear. No spaceman had better say anything about the Planeteers! Rip saw that the deputy commander and the safety officer had appeared not to notice the incident. Technically, there was no reason for an officer to take action. It had all been an "accident." He smiled. There was a lot he had to learn about dealing with spacemen, a lot Koa evidently knew very well indeed. Suddenly he began to feel weight. The ship was going into rotation. The feeling increased until he felt normally heavy again. There was no other sensation, even though the space cruiser now was spinning on its axis through space at unaltered speed. The centrifugal force produced by the spinning gave them an artificial gravity. Now that he thought about it, brennschluss had come pretty early. The trip apparently was going to be a short one. Brennschluss ... funny, he thought, how words stay on in a language even after their original meaning is changed. Brennschluss was German for "burn out." It was rocket talk, and it meant the moment when all the fuel in a rocket burned out. It had come into common use because the English "burn out" also could mean that the engine itself had burned out. The German word meant only the one thing. Now, in nuclear drive ships, the same word was used for the moment when power was cut off. Words interested him. He started to mention it to Koa just as the telescreen lit up. An officer’s face appeared. "Send that Planeteer officer to the commander," the face said. "Tell him to show an exhaust." Rip called instantly to the safety officer. "Where’s his office?" The safety officer motioned to a spaceman. "Show him, Nelson." Rip followed the spaceman through a maze of passages, growing more weightless with each step. The closer to the center of the ship they went, the less he weighed. He was pulling himself along by plastic pull cords when they finally reached the door marked "Commander." The spaceman left without a word or a salute. Rip pushed the lock bar and pulled himself in by grabbing the door frame. He couldn’t help thinking it was a rather undignified way to make an entrance. Seated in an acceleration chair, a safety belt across his middle, was Space Commander Keven O’Brine, an Irishman out of Dublin. He was short, as compact as a deto-rocket, and obviously unfriendly. He had a mathematically square jaw, a lopsided nose, green eyes, and sandy hair. He spoke with a pronounced Irish brogue. Rip started to announce his name, rank, and the fact that he was reporting as ordered. Commander O’Brine brushed his words aside and stated flatly, "You’re a Planeteer. I don’t like Planeteers."